My Cardboard Balcony

Enter, If You Dare by Belinda Roddie A series of irrational actions I could take when my eyes are superglued into a staring contest with the void:  1. Shave my head, so my face can perfectly maintain the shape, color, and texture of a spoiled hard boiled egg. 2. Drink pickle juice straight from the jar - which I actually don't mind doing from time to time, but but in this situation, it would be for the sole purpose of drying out my blood cells and turning me into a second Dead Sea. 3. Paint my nails, but in the weirdest, most clashing hues - hot pinks and swamp greens and sad shithouse red, so no one pays attention to the stained words sticking to my teeth and only to the monstrosities bursting out of my fingers like Lovecraft's racist textual nightmares. 4. Adopt an otter. I will never adopt an otter. They are cute, but my cat would hate me forever. 5. Move to Montana and become a cowboy, including drinking myself to death with the help of the besotted bastards themselves, Jac...

Privilege by Belinda Roddie You can make tough decisions over bubbly? Good for you.

Wait 'Til It Happens In Person by Belinda Roddie Scientific fact: Enby fist bumps are the best fist bumps.

The Book by Belinda Roddie I did not remember writing these words. Then again, I didn't remember writing anything. It had been two weeks since the amnesia had kicked in like the airbags deploying in the car accident. My sedan had been totaled. My brain, dented. Right where it counted. The book was leatherbound and dusty, and it smelled like rainwater and salt. The book had a broken latch and torn out pages like lost fingernails. The book was old and worn down and covered with incessant cerebral scribbles. Scribbles that turned into stream of consciousness sagas and love stories and queer fantasies and ramblings. I read it all. I did not remember any of it. This week's prompt was me just thinking of books. Yay.

Poor François-Marie Arouet by Belinda Roddie Voltaire, you wouldn't last one day in twenty-first century society.

Holy moly, what a week. Where to begin? Well, for starters, there was a fucking fire just a little bit away from Arden's and my condo. We had to force poor Binx into a carrier and wait outside where the local firefighters put it out. That put me in a mood for the rest of the week. Wrapping up the equivalent of a semester within a quarter's time is, and remains, super difficult. I hate still accidentally hurting people I love. Can I please just be a perfect android already? Tonight was so fun, though. OK Zoomer did a mash-up of Peanuts and Hocus Pocus, and I was living for it. I also got to play Peppermint Patty - my first lesbian icon! I know, I know - don't slap an orientation on a cartoon kid. But come on. Peppermint Patty x Marcie = endgame! I am super grateful for the friends I've made, despite most of them being on the east coast and very, very far away from me. But there's a lot of fun stuff on the horizon. Also, vote for Biden. You vote for Trump, and I want...

Puerile by Belinda Roddie Here they are: the puerile portraits of my own juvenile delinquency. Note the femininity in attire in the very early phases. In future years, we emphasize the choice in a white polo shirt. See how, in swimming pools, I purify my soul with chlorine. See how, in these photographs, my father smiles with ease. I am unashamed of my past, though I would never relive it, no matter how much you paid me. Well...I'd maybe settle for a Benjamin if I went back with the adult brain I have now. But that's asking for too much, isn't it? Funny how advanced technology still produces poor renderings of photos done on film. The cinematic, at long last, is finished. Now the real games can begin. The games of me forging delusions on binder paper and bound journals. The amusements of lies and the grandiosities of rejection. The wide-eyed naivety before adolescence punched me in the imaginary nads. To my past self: You'll be much happer in a couple of decades or so.